Best First Hours

alan wake

As we stand on the precipice of a new console generation, the old argument begins to show its ugly head: “We don’t need a new console generation yet,” or “the console is holding back the PC.” In this generation, more than any other I remember, the argument is loud and salient. Traditionally you had hard-core PC gamers on one side stating that consoles were lagging behind, and the hard-core console lovers on the other asserting that the current generation was still producing quality games. The reality, of course, is that developers always want more to work with, but they also need to be profitable. This, of course, doesn’t mean that all of them are going to push it to the maximum, but more horse-power gives the developer the freedom to choose how they use it as opposed to spending their time and money eking out every last drop of performance available (see: XBLA/PSN releases).

Alan Wake has been a long time coming. After Max Payne 2 released in
2003, Remedy has
used the majority of their resources for this game. Originally
announced in 2005, it
has naturally undergone significant revisions. Once a freeroaming
affair, Alan Wake is now almost entirely linear. Instead of releasing
on consoles
and PC, Remedy ended up partnering with Microsoft for an exclusive 360
release. As one would expect from a partnership, the game got bigger
and bigger and eventually ended up being a high-profile, big-budget
release when it finally hit in May 2010. Such a big game for a small
company would carry with it many risks and increasingly impatient
onlookers. Is the survival-horror tale worth the wait in the end?
Is the Alan Wake concept still relevant and contemporary enough several
years
later? Most importantly, is the game good and does it work? Let's take
a dive into the darkness...